We argue that the key impediment to accurate measurement of the effect of police on crime is not necessarily simultaneity bias, but bias due to mismeasurement of police. Using a new panel data set on crime in medium to large U.S. cities over 1960- 2010, we obtain measurement error corrected...

Using administrative, longitudinal data on felony arrests in Florida, we exploit the doscontinous increase in the punitiveness of criminal sanctions at 18 to estimate the deterence effect of incarceration. Our analysis suggests a 2 percent decline in the logodds of offending at 18, with a...

Forward-looking behavior on the part of the monetary authority makes it difficult to estimate the effect of monetary policy interventions on output. We present instrumental variables estimates of the impact of interest rates on quarterly real output for several European countries, using German...

This paper examines changes in individual real incomes in South Africa between 1995 and 2000. We document substantial declines—on the order of 40%—in real incomes for both men and women. The brunt of the income decline appears to have been shouldered by the young and the non-White. We argue...

Using administrative, longitudinal data on felony arrests in Florida, we exploit the discontinuous increase in the punitiveness of criminal sanctions at 18 to estimate the deterrence effect of incarceration. Our analysis suggests a 2 percent decline in the log-odds of offending at 18, with...

Economic theory predicts that increasing the severity of punishments will deter criminal behavior by raising the expected price of committing crime. This implicit price can be substantially raised by making prison sentences longer, but only if offenders' discount rates are relatively low. We use...

Arguably the most aggressive affirmative action program ever implemented in the United States was a series of court-ordered racial hiring quotas imposed on municipal police departments. My best estimate of the effect of court-ordered affirmative action on work-force composition is a...

This paper examines changes in individual real incomes in South Africa between 1995 and 2000. We document substantial declines--on the order of 40%--in real incomes for both men and women. The brunt of the income decline appears to have been shouldered by the young and the non-white. We argue...